Jacques Delille

Jacques Delille (French: [dəlil]; 22 June 1738 at Aigueperse in Auvergne – 1 May 1813, in Paris) was a French poet who came to national prominence with his translation of Virgil's Georgics and made an international reputation with his didactic poem on gardening. He barely survived the slaughter of the French Revolution and lived for some years outside France, including three years in England. The poems on abstract themes that he published after his return were less well received.

Biography

Delille was an illegitimate child, descended on his mother's side from Michel de l'Hôpital. He was educated at the College of Lisieux in Paris and became an elementary school teacher. He had gradually acquired a reputation as a poet by the publication of some minor works by the time his translation of the Georgics of Virgil in 1769 made him famous. When Voltaire recommended Delille for the next vacant place in the Académie française, he was at once elected a member, but he was not admitted until 1774 owing to the opposition of the king, who alleged that he was too young.

In his work on gardens and their landscaping, Jardins, ou l'art d'embellir les paysages (1782), he made good his pretensions as an original poet. In 1786 Delille made a journey to Constantinople in the train of the ambassador M. de Choiseul-Gouffier. He had become professor of Latin poetry at the Collège de France, and was given the secular title of Abbé de Saint-Sévrin, when the outbreak of the French Revolution reduced him to poverty. He purchased his personal safety by professing his adherence to revolutionary doctrine, but eventually quit Paris and retired to his wife's birthplace at Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, where he worked on his translation of the Aeneid.